High chairs for infants are large and clumsy for the purpose they serve and require considerable storage space. Many different structures have been devised to allow parts of a chair to be folded or dismantled when not in use. Too often the mechanisms are complex, and various catches, foldable members and the like are accessible to an infant seated in the chair, which can result in injury or even inadvertent collapsing of parts of the chair.
Some chairs have been designed to collapse completely into a compact package, which can be carried in the form of a piece of luggage. In some types, the legs and side arms are detached and stored in the seat or other major structural element, which is time consuming and requires numerous fasteners to be operated. The usual tray must also be stored and, if this is to be enclosed in the main structure, is necessarily smaller than the seat, which itself has size limitations to accommodate and support an infant.
Other types of structures have foldable components which are stored against the outside of the main structure. This type of assembly is unattractive in appearance and the external components tend to snag on other articles when the folded chair is stored, or when traveling with other luggage.
One particularly undesirable feature common to many foldable chairs is the reduced size of the leg base, due to compromises in folding the legs into the structure. Often the legs extend straight down from the seat, resulting in a small leg base and making the chair easy to tip over. The legs can be attached to inclined brackets to provide a stable spread of the legs, but usually must be detached for storage.